A Conversation about Compulsion, the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, and Virtual Reality

Is there a place for virtual reality in the digital humanities toolkit? For all of the early hype surrounding the use virtual reality for teaching and learning and the ubiquity of online options for exploring three-dimensional worlds, the challenges inherent in developing and sustaining large-scale academic reconstruction projects limit their viability and likelihood for success. Academics considering such foolishness must contend with disciplinary skepticism, the need to articulate appropriate research questions to justify the effort required to produce tangible results, and pressure to develop methodologies for annotations and citations that are comparable to print publications. From a project management perspective, three-dimensional research is difficult because it requires a specific start-up environment, ongoing funding beyond that typically available to the humanities researcher, and a clearly defined ultimate use for the eventual product that justifies the expended effort. From a curricular perspective, virtual reality research exists only on the borders of digital humanities as it is currently defined. In order to fully integrate three-dimensional research into the curriculum, administrators need to contend with issues of scalability, the availability of software, a need for clearly defined learning objectives, and a steep learning curve that can negatively impact student projects. Working from the conviction that virtual reality – even given these daunting challenges – does provide significant research opportunities for academics and benefits to student users, this presentation will focus on the reconstruction projects that are the hallmark of three-dimensional research at UCLA. Following a demonstration of the World’s Columbian Exposition project currently under construction, Snyder will discuss her project team’s efforts to leverage existing and new computer modeling work for pedagogical use through a new NEH-funded real-time software interface and content repository intended to provide a mechanism for exploring highly detailed three-dimensional models in educational settings.